Work Christmas parties revisited!

It's 9 years since I posted this about a "Compulsory" Christmas party. This week I found this thread on Reddit, where the original poster asks "am I miserable/antisocial" for not wanting to go, and the link goes straight to a comment from a poster who is also autistic and admits talking in groups is extremely difficult for them. The replies mix those saying "networking is an important part of work and career" and those defending the right not to go such as "social events one attends from obligation are likely to be a pain". The job I've had in these last few years, yes there have been some meals and the dreaded "Secret Santas" but they'd understood and accepted my non-participation. With only a few working days to go before this Christmas it isn't now likely I'll be starting in a new workplace let alone dealing with whether to go to a Christmas do or not.

Universal credit adverts banned as 'misleading'

This BBC article about the Advertising Standards Agency received 44 complaints about six newspaper adverts and a web page being banned for misleading the public doesn't surprise me.

"The idea that claimants need to change"

The first line of this Guardian article is that "the underlying problem with the flagship Tory policy is the idea that claimants need to change". The former hard right wing Work and Pensions Secretary’s conviction that the role of the system was not simply to allocate benefits, but to "change claimants’ behaviour". I as a person with Asperger who has had a good job for nearly 8 years but about to be made redundant due to outsourcing, thus sending me back to the open job market, raise the question of "What of typical EMPLOYER behaviour?" Will the EMPLOYER choose me over a good communicator anywhere? It was all very well when the said former Work and Pensions Secretary would say "disabled people have to get back into work", but did he question EMPLOYERS on taking them on? They set their Person Specifications and choose the other person avoiding any question by just saying "the other applicant more closely matched the role profile".

Annoying temp at work watching videos

So, with a few months to go until our reduncancies, there has been this temp at work, he is quite annoying with constant yacking, often asking colleagues very personal questions, and most annoyingly, watching videos on his work computer.  Just the other day the team leader finally walked past his desk and reminded him he wasn't being paid to watch online videos, and rightly so.

Ties in with this Quora.com debate about employers monitoring work computers.  The link goes straight to a reply where the poster has said they didn’t actively monitor why their team was doing, but would notice if they were playing videos on YouTube etc.

Now comes the crux of the annoyance to me, if I was being interviewed against this guy for only one position, the chances are he would have been chosen.  He has the gift of the gab that I, as a person with Asperger, do not.  He would be brilliant at "selling himself", yet once employed, has that inclination to time-waste.

Three buckets of skills

This article from Hays is covering "horizontal career moves" in the context of moving sideways from one job to another, to gain the skills, experience and knowledge required to progress their upwards career path in the future. It is interesting, but what would also be worth covering would be the context of someone who did not necessarily want to "progress an upwards career path" at all, it is taken for granted that everyone should want to do that.

"When the Job Centre used to find people jobs"

Gone direct to a comment on a thread on Reddit where the poster's father used to work for the Job Centre. The post describes how they met employers to match their requirements to seekers' skills and personalities. More such meetings should still be in place, this could help for the Job Centre person to introduce an Asperger jobseeker to an employer, as the Job Centre person would be able to better explain the positive offsets than the Asperger jobseeker themselves in an open interview in competition with others who do not have the condition.